"Here I am again, Monsieur Maigrat," said Maheude humbly, finding him standing in front of his door.

He looked at her without replying. He was a stout, cold, polite man, and he prided himself on never changing his mind.

"Now you won't send me away again, like yesterday. We must have bread from now to Saturday. Sure enough, we owe you sixty francs these two years."

She explained in short, painful phrases. It was an old debt contracted during the last strike. Twenty times over they had promised to settle it, but they had not been able; they could not even give him forty sous a fortnight. And then a misfortune had happened two days before; she had been obliged to pay twenty francs to a shoemaker who threatened to seize their things. And that was why they were without a sou. Otherwise they would have been able to go on until Saturday, like the others.

Maigrat, with protruded belly and folded arms, shook his head at every supplication.

"Only two loaves, Monsieur Maigrat. I am reasonable, I don't ask for coffee. Only two three-pound loaves a day."

"No," he shouted at last, at the top of his voice.

His wife had appeared, a pitiful creature who passed all her days over a ledger, without even daring to lift her head. She moved away, frightened at seeing this unfortunate woman turning her ardent, beseeching eyes towards her. It was said that she yielded the conjugal bed to the putters among the customers. It was a known fact that when a miner wished to prolong his credit, he had only to send his daughter or his wife, plain or pretty, it mattered not, provided they were complaisant.

Maheude, who comes from a family of poor miners, asks the store owner, Monsieur Maigrat, to give her a bit of bread on credit, because she can't pay for it. He refuses. Maigrat makes Scrooge McDuck look like a generous dude.

In this passage from Zola's novel, we see Maheude fighting for her survival and the survival of her family. Food, of course, is the most basic thing we need for survival. But Maheude is so poor she can't pay for food. So she begs Monsieur Maigrat, who refuses to give her any.

This passage, then, shows us how the struggle against poverty is a struggle for survival. Poor people like Maheude have to fight to secure the most basic things that all of us take for granted. And even though they try, they often fail in doing so… especially when prize dirtbags like Maigrat are running the show. We want to reach into these pages and punch him in the face.

We can't help but feel really, really bad when we read this passage. Poor Maheude. The narrator tells us that her family is deeply in debt, and that a recent financial calamity has left the family even poorer than before. We feel sorry for Maheude because we see her struggling to survive.

In contrast, Monsieur Maigrat comes across as incredibly—like, indescribably—mean and stingy. He clearly has no interest in helping Maheude, even though she is (literally) putting her life in his hands. By contrasting Maheude's need with Maigrat's lack of generosity, Zola shows us just how much the poor suffer.